The present invention generally relates to an improved method and system for printing from a web application. More specifically, it relates to an improved system and method for printing target data from a web application used through a browser of a client computer that is operatively connected to a web server providing the web application.
The use of web applications has been growing over the years as the Internet gets more sophisticated. Because most web applications are designed to work with cross-platform browsers, they operate independently from the operating system (“OS”). In other words, most web applications can work with any operating systems, such as LINUX®, WINDOWS®, or MACINTOSH®. As such, web applications are becoming an extremely powerful tool on the Internet. Currently, most web pages from the web application are printed through the functionality of the web browser, which, in turn, makes use of the underlying operating system. However, printing from browsers is known to frequently produce bad results. The printed documents typically match the display page on the browser, which is optimized for viewing rather than printing and often creates undesired results. Furthermore, as a result of numerous browsers that are currently being used, the printing of web pages varies greatly from browser to browser, resulting in inconsistent printing.
Consequently, there are current web applications that provide a means of generating printable data from the web applications themselves in an attempt to provide information optimized for printing to overcome the printing problems caused by the browser. Adobe Acrobat is a widely available web browser plug-in designed to read, display and print Portable Document Format (“PDF”) files from within a web browser. As a result of being integrated into the browser, the user can preview the print output. However, there are still limitations. Although the plug-ins, such as Adobe Acrobat, give users previews of their print output, they do not provide a preview of the print output in the context of the peripheral devices and/or services. The print output displayed is simply a preview of the document with the formats that are set up in the document, which may look different when the features or limitation of the peripheral devices are added.